The Fandom Advantage: How Fan Creativity Fuels Pro Entertainment Careers

Fansplaining returned to San Diego Comic-Con this year (our tenth anniversary!) with a fantastic panel of fandom folks who work in pro entertainment careers. There's an audio recording here on our feed, and over at the website:

 

https://www.fansplaining.com/articles/sdcc-2025-the-fandom-advantage

 

You can watch video version as well as read a full transcript. Because the intro to the audio is only on this feed, that's transcribed below.

 

Transcript of intro: 

 

Hi everyone! Elizabeth here. I am fresh off San Diego Comic-Con 2025...or not...fresh, but I'm off. [laughing] I got home in the wee hours of yesterday morning. Had a wonderful time, but am happy to be home and sleeping in my own bed. 

 

So as you almost undoubtedly know, because we mentioned it a million times over the course of the podcast, Flourish and I first met at San Diego, we were on a panel together in 2015. So this is the ten-year anniversary. 

 

And so I was really honored to be able to host a panel again on Fansplaining's behalf, though it was obviously bittersweet because Flourish wasn't there...though I will say I sent over some pictures, and I think Flourish, I'm just dragging them back towards coming, just for Comic-Con in the future. [laughing] 

 

So this was the fourth panel that Fansplaining has hosted since we started doing our own panels in 2019. It was called "The Fandom Advantage: How Fan Creativity Fuels Pro Entertainment Careers." 

 

So this was an incredibly talented collection of panelists. I'm always so thrilled by the people we can get together for these panels. They've worked on huge properties like Interview with the Vampire, for example, The Witcher, Supernatural, just a long list of fan-favorites—Star Wars. And then indie stuff like FIYAH Literary Magazine and queer indie publishing. 

 

And they came onto talk about their fannish past and presents, and how that connects to the work that they do professionally.

 

So this audio, I really appreciate, recorded by Sadie Witkowski, who is the host of another fandom podcast, In Defense of Fandom. Definitely go check that out, if you just google it, or go to fansplaining.com, you can get a link from the show page. Sadie was kind enough to, while sitting in the front row of the audience, record on her phone and on her recorder, but this was an echoey auditorium, this was what we could manage without having access to professional equipment, so the audio quality is a bit mixed.

 

So I would highly recommend going over to fansplaining.com and checking out the full transcript, because I think that will make it a lot easier to follow along, whether you're listening to the audio version here or watching the YouTube video, which is on YouTube itself, of course, and on our site, fansplaining.com.

 

So hopefully you enjoy this conversation, and thanks again to all the panelists. It was really great to talk to you this weekend.